/uses page

Inspired by many other developer's /uses pages, here's some of my daily tools.

Software & Services

• Mozilla Firefox

  My main browser choice is Firefox. I want to avoid Google's products as much as I can and Safari never hit off. As an Mozilla alumnus I also have an emotional connection with the Firefox community.

• VS Code

  I use VS Code as one of my code editors.

• vim

  I use vim as another of my code editors.

• Notion

  My main (and one of many) note taking app/service. I keep mostly long-term planning stuff there and do most of my daily note-taking with either a physical notebooks or iPad.

• Obsidian

  I have been experimenting with Obsidian as my note-taking tool recently. I like how snappy it is comparede to Notion, how it works offline, how all the data is in Markdown files and how nicely the Sync works. I keep notes of my customizations at /uses/obsidian/.

• Affinity Designer

  I do quite a bit light graphic design for things like graphic elements on this site, blog headers, event posters and such. Affinity Designer is a nice middle ground between power use and simplicity.

• Unsplash

  I use Unsplash every day. A collection of high quality photos with a permissible license? Sign me up! I use them for blog graphics, in my slides for presentations and to spice up my communication.

• Raycast

  Raycast is a Spotlight on steroids for MacOS. I use it with a bunch of small self-written plugins to make often done actions easier and simpler to do.

• IINA media player

  Like it says on the packaging, IINA is the modern media player for macOS.. It looks slick, it plays everything (local files, streams, Youtube videos) and has good settings. A no-brainer replacement for default QuickTime Player or VLC on Mac.

• LocalSend

  A cross-platform AirDrop alternative that works way better than AD. You install it on your machines (giving them funny names is mandatory, I have devices called Horse and Starmie amongst others) and then drag and drop files across any devices in your local network.

• Hand Mirror

  In the modern era of remote work and constant video calls, I like Hand Mirror's quick peek function. I press CTRL+1 and a small window pops up on the top right corner, showing me the view from my webcam. I use it before calls to double check right devices are plugged in and my background looks relatively clutter free.

• More tiny tools

  I have two blog posts detailing more of Tiny Handy Tools that I and others in my community use. Check out Tiny Handy Tools and Tiny Handy Tools: Community Edition.

Gaming

• PlayStation 4

  I grew up as a Nintendo kid, spent my teenage years with Xbox and Xbox 360 and PS4 is my first PlayStation. I got it in the fall 2015 and have been playing so many hours with it. I mostly play sports games (NHL, FIFA and Madden series and NBA 2k until 2k went evil) but I also sub to PS+ and usually find one or two good games a month to play through that subscription.

• Nintendo Switch

  Mario, Zelda, Pokemon. Do I need to say more? The ability to take it with me or play at home docked is so good. I have a nice travel setup with a small dock and utilities for playing on larger screens while traveling in hotels or visiting my parent's. There are also game recommendations in the travel setup blog post, updated for 2023.

• Steam Deck

  Steam Deck is what I wished Nintendo Switch would have been: I can play games, watch media, surf the web and even write code if I want to. It completely changed my gaming habits and opened up my gaming habits to much wider selection of games. I also have a JSAUX dock hooked into my display at my desk for mouse & keyboard style games and I connect to my projector via a generic USB-C dongle when I want to sit on the couch and play on the big screen.

To build and run this website

• Notion

  I use Notion as my headless CMS for blog posts and /weeklies.

• Eleventy

  Eleventy is my static site generator of choice since 2018. It just works for me, it's something I understand every bit of my stack when I build with it and I can customize and write my own filters and plugins and whatever I need.

• Netlify

  I use Netlify to host this and a few dozen other sites, some with a paid plan and others on the free one.

• Github

  I keep my project version controlled in GitHub and have Netlify automatically build when main branch is updated and it auto-creates preview builds for pull requests.

• Prism.js

  Syntax highlight library for code snippets, with a custom highlight plugin for Pokemon TCG decklists.

Command line

• iTerm 2

  Terminal app of my choice has been iTerm2 since I got my first Mac over a decade ago and was told it's good. I looked into Warp at one point but was turned off by the idea of having to have an account to use a terminal.

• zsh

  I switched to zsh for my shell a bit before Apple made it default. I'm not power user enough to really care about most of the extra features. I like zsh though.

• oh-my-zsh

  A framework on top of zsh to add a bunch of customizations and extra features.

• starship prompt

  A shell prompt with nice defaults and easy enough customizations. In my prompt, I have status indicator for success/fail of previous command, current working directory, git branch and status and possible dev environment info like Python virtualenvs, Node versions and so on.

• mcfly history tool

  mcfly is a drop-in replacement for shell history but offers a better UI that prioritizes most commonly used commands for your current working directory. It works wonders for stuff you do often.